Ignoring Advice We’ve Paid For
As Council, we ask administration for advice and information. We're not the experts (although some members of council might disagree with that) – our job is to take the advice and information and use it to help guide our decision making. One of the areas in which some city staff have more expertise than council is community planning. A community plan should be used to provide direction to help ensure that the ways in which a community grows are attractive, efficient and effective.
We currently have a community plan that's still in draft stage – that is, it hasn't been formally approved. But some good thinking and common sense has gone into it, and I often wonder why we don't consider the advice available, even in draft form, when we make some of our decisions.
For example, at the last two council meetings we have approved high density developments – new condos. The draft community plan recommends that such higher density developments should be built along major arterial routes, with consideration for amenities such as parks and bus routes. The logic is that such amenities shouldn't be thought of after the development has been made, but as part of the planning process.
The two developments that council approved, one at each meeting, haven't considered this advice. Both are in the far east end of the city – one on 1st Street East, the other east on Highway 302.